It's time. Here are our choices for the 50 greatest Welsh songs of all time.

From rock and pop masterpieces through Christmas classics, the late 80s Welsh language music scene, true Welsh anthems and even hymns.

We know it's not a like for like comparison... but how could you create a list of the greatest songs to have come from this magnificently musical country without including both, say, Tom Jones's Delilah and Calon Lân?

Exactly. You can't.

We also know you could throw in plenty more hits from some of our very best bands - but that wouldn't make for a very varied list, would it?

So here they are, in order, counting down from 50 to our choice for the greatest song to ever come from these shores.

You can click through the run-down in the pictures above before reading why we picked what we did below.

It's a celebration. It's hwyl. It's the soundtrack to Wales. Enjoy.

50. Shakin’ Stevens – Merry Christmas Everyone

Thank goodness this is a Christmas song as it gets repeated year after year and it never loses its appeal. Cheesy lyrics and an even cheesier video make it the perfect anthem at every festive party.

49. Goldie Lookin’ Chain – Guns Don’t Kill People Rappers Do

Newport's hip-hop satirists aren’t daft. In this song, they’ve cleverly deconstructed tired arguments about music and violence. They sample KRS-One's Sound of Da Police brilliantly and even mention Ivor Emmanuel’s classic film Zulu – two things not often put together.

48. The Joy Formidable – Whirring

The gutsy female-fronted powerhouse indie rock trio from Mold are signed to Warner brothers and have recently toured with The Foo Fighters at frontman’s Dave Grohl’s invitation. This 2009 single packed a mighty punch – guttural, twisted guitars, battered drums and ether-bothering choruses all sounding imperiously otherworldly.

47. Donna Lewis – I Love You Always Forever

The single reached number five on the UK Singles Chart in the summer of 1996, and spent 14 weeks in the chart – and was kept from the US Billboard number one spot by Los Del Rio’s Macarena. We didn’t hear much from former Cardiff singer again, which is a shame as the album that gave us the song was called, brilliantly, Now In A Minute.

46. Marina & The Diamonds – I Am Not A Robot

This stand-out cut from the Abergavenny diva’s debut album The Family Jewels was a caustic note-to-self not to get affected by the pressure of fame. Hollywood was the big hit everyone remembers, but this self-deprecating reminder to always be yourself is arguably the stand-out track.

45. Y Cyrff - Cymru, Lloegr a Llanrwst

Way before Cool Cymru, the late 80s Welsh language music scene bubbled with brilliance. The pick of the bunch was Y Cyrff, who featured the considerable talents of Mark Roberts and Paul Jones - later to re-emerge in Catatonia. This spiky clarion call was their masterpiece.

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44. Dave Edmunds – Girls Talk

While the phrase ’50s throwback’ may comfortably apply to the Cardiff-born legend, this 1979 hit originally written by Elvis Costello was a nifty collision between the nascent New Wave scene and the guitarist’s bootlace and brothel-creeper rock ‘n’ roll.

43. Manic Street Preachers – Faster

Any of the songs off the Blackwood boys’ tour de force 1994 record The Holy Bible would stand up among the best songs of the last two decades, let alone exclusively Welsh one. Their third album was a morose navel-gazing study imbued with Richey Edwards’ personal problems, but this song undoubtedly stands the test of time as a jagged, storming slice of alt rock which is probably best remembered for James Dean Bradfield’s balaclava-sporting moment on Top of the Pops.

42. The Automatic – Monster

The Cowbridge band's flame burnt briefly but brightly in the mid noughties. None more so than on their biggest hit, which hit the giddy heights of number four in the UK singles chart. Cardiff City fans memorably re-purposed the song in tribute to their striker Michael Chopra – with the chant: 'What's the coming over the hill? It's Michael Chopra.'

41. The Teardrop Explodes - Reward

Okay, so it's time to 'fess up - we didn't really know that Julian Cope was even Welsh to start with. But, seeing as he was born in Caerphilly, we're perfectly entitled to lay claim to his eccentric rock genius and cite this monster post-punk stomper from 1980 as a bona fide homegrown hit.

40. Budgie – Breadfan

The hoary old denim and leather-wearing Cardiffians’ greatest moment, this riff-heavy slice of proto-heavy metal that saw the band introduced to a whole new generation when Metallica performed a cover version of it as a B-side in 1988. Taken from the 1973 album Never Turn Your Back On A Friend.

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39. Yr Anhrefn – Cornel

Beloved of John Peel these Bangor rabble-rousers featured fired up iconoclast Rhys Mwyn – a one man punk propaganda machine who advanced the cause of the late ’80s Welsh language scene by decamping to the doorstep of Radio 1 to hand Peel a tape of his band’s fiery political polemic. That was enough for the legendary DJ to declare himself smitten, and this furious barrage of melody and noise sums them up perfectly.

38. Tom Jones – Delilah

You can salute the bombast of Jones's I Who Have Nothing, or any number of his other songs, but the fact remains that when the unmistakable first notes of Delilah begin to play, the crowd - any crowd - goes wild.

37. Feeder – Buck Rogers

When it comes to rock songs with ginormous choruses, Grant Nicholas and his band have cornered the market. From the band's breakthrough album Echo Park, the song was originally written by Nicholas for an American band called Radio Star, but the label and producer Gil Norton liked the song and convinced the band that it could be a hit for them. He wasn't wrong.

36. Joseph Parry and Richard Davies - Myfanwy

Male choirs almost seem to whisper this stunning piece composed by Joseph Parry to lyrics written by Richard Davies and first published in 1875. Some sources say it was written with Parry's childhood sweetheart, Myfanwy Llywellyn, in mind. Whoever it is, her 'lygaid duon di' (dark eyes) were certainly inspirational. A version has been performed by John Cale and Cerys Matthews and it takes on a sinister feel when used for the grim finale of the film Twin Town.

35. Duffy – Mercy

This Northern Soul spinner is the Nefyn songstress' signature song and a highlight from her multi-million selling debut Rockferry, which catapulted her to fame and fortune in 2008. It's probably best if we don't mention her follow-up album.

34. Racing Cars - They Shoot Horses Don't They?

Signed to one of the biggest British record labels of the 70s, Chrysalis Records, the Valleys band's debut album yielded this, their only hit single reaching number 14 in the UK singles chart in 1977, inspired by the film, They Shoot Horses, Don't They? Without any similar further chart appearances, Racing Cars ultimately acquired the dreaded one hit wonder label.

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33. Ricky Valance – Tell Laura I Love Her

A classic song from 1960, this tragic story tells of a teenage boy named Tommy who dies in the car race he entered, the prize money from which he planned to use to buy his love Laura a wedding ring. “Tell Laura I love her... My love for her will never die” are his dying words as the flames lick around him. Honestly, makes us want to weep just thinking about it.

Swansea’s cool indie kids were Welsh rock’s biggest inside joke, a monumental yet affectionate prank on the very mythology of pop itself. This paean to the late 80s’ indie cognoscenti is twee jangle-pop in excelsis.

31. Bonnie Tyler – Total Eclipse Of The Heart

The power ballad quickly became the permed wonder's biggest hit, reaching number one in several countries including the United States, making her the first and only Welsh singer to reach the top of the Billboard Charts. Powerful and uplifting, the Jim Steinman penned song is a real belter even if it might not be the coolest song to come out of Cymru.

30. Y Niwl – Undegpedwar

Surf rock from halfway up a mountain in North Wales – surely there’s been some mistake? Not so, as this Snowdonian four-piece’s 2010 debut album, Y Niwl, delivered a selection of psychedelic 60s twang that not only paid homage to likes of Dick Dale, Link Wray and The Ventures but added something unique of its own too.

29. Super Furry Animals – Northern Lites

Of all the entries in the Furries' canon, this mystical gem off their 1999 Guerilla album proffers a glimpse of a blissfully straightforward pop song – but it’s not without the SFA twist. Inspired by the El Nino climate phenomenon, Gruff Rhys’ decision to make it a calypso is a stunning piece of wizardry. The resultant ditty is both warming and cool, and became the band’s highest charting single, reaching a heady 11th position before its glow was snuffed out.

28. Stereophonics – Local Boy In The Photograph

The Phonics' first single, it was an anthem for any Welsh teenager in the late 1990s, despite only reaching No51 in the charts on its release in March 1997. The flip side, Buy Myself a Small Plane, is a cracker too: three minutes and 20 seconds of punk-pop that perfectly encapsulated the raw energy of early Phonics gigs.

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27. Shirley Bassey – History Repeating

Never mind all that Goldfinger, Big Spender stuff, we all know that the Dame can belt out those kind of feather boa’d standards in her sleep. Instead the Tiger Bay diva celebrated her 60th birthday by hooking up with cult British big beat act Propellerheads for this funky little dance floor filler, guaranteeing herself no small career rebirth in the process.

26. Daniel James and John Hughes - Calon Lân

The words were written in the 19th century by Daniel James to a tune by John Hughes. The hymn's title translates as 'Pure Heart' and sounds truly incredible when being belted out by a male choir, which it is often is before the Welsh rugby team takes to the field.

25. Gorky's Zygotic Mynci – Patio Song

Off-kilter, weird and downright Welsh, this 1996 single is a testament to the untapped genius of the Carmarthenshire group. Featured on the Barafundle album, its changing tempo – and language – makes it all the more otherworldly, with Euros Childs’ intonation all indie geekery wrapped up in a sweet melody. Redolent of a unique and enticing Wales, it still causes swooning when unleashed by indie DJs across the country.

24. Nomad – Devotion

Dance anthems don’t come much bigger than this 1991 house monster courtesy of Cardiff’s Damon Rochefort. A worldwide number one, its soulful repetitive rhythms and electronic loops were the perfect fit for the burgeoning rave culture of the day. It was also a glorious snapshot of a moment in time when the world was truly in motion.

23. The 60ft Dolls – Stay

While the mid-’90s may have seen every music critic revelling in the new cliche that Newport was the new Seattle, this hedonistic threesome were having too much fun to care. Their stand out lovelorn punk-pop anthem crashed and burned much like the band itself, but is an unquestionable reminder of the town’s premier rip-snortin’ rock ‘n’ rollers at their stately best.

22. The Darling Buds – Burst

Backcombed front runners of the spurious music press-created ‘Blonde’ movement, Newport’s spiky indie popsters fronted by the delectable Andrea Lewis fizzed like an Alka-Seltzer dipped in lemonade. A riotously exuberant three minutes, it was a Blondie-meets-Buzzcocks iridescent pop rush.

21. Scritti Politti – Absolute

Cardiff’s androgynously-voiced Green Gartside (no more so than when rocking the Princess Di look he sported in the video to this ’84 track) was one of the biggest British music stars of the age until, disenchanted with showbiz, he turned into a Salinger-like semi-recluse. However, his subsequent elusiveness has only added weight to his body of work which is full of the kind of effortlessly breezy pop suss that most artists would give their backcombed barnets for.

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20. Visage – Fade To Grey

Forget that career derailing drug habit, Steve Strange was the Pierrot-faced pioneer of the New Romantic movement and his band’s peerless slice of electro flouncery from 1981 was never bettered by anyone. Neither was it topped by Strange himself, who’s still dining out on it today – and who can blame him? Few others captured the zeitgeist of that decade so effectively.

19. Stereophonics – Dakota

The song that, five albums into their career, gave the Cwmaman rockers their first number one also saw Kelly Jones’ songwriting cred get a complete overhaul. Indeed this electronic-tinged, ‘driving with the top down’ shout-along even coaxed kind words from the sort of trendy music scribes who’d hitherto regarded them as a musical meat-and-potatoes anathema.

18. Dave Edmunds – I Hear You Knockin'

A Christmas number one in 1970 for the Cardiff rock 'n' roller, whose gritty interpretation of the rhythm and blues song written by Dave Bartholomew and Earl King, swept all before it, putting the Welsh ace firmly on the rock map.

17. Amen Corner – (If Paradise Is) Half as Nice

The band was named after The Amen Corner, a weekly disc spin at the Victoria Ballroom - later to become The Scene Club - in Cardiff, where every Sunday night Dr. Rock would play the best soul music from the United States. Leaving Decca to to join Immediate in 1968, they were instantly rewarded with their only number one (If Paradise Is) Half as Nice in early 1969. Altogether now... lalalalalalalalalalalalala!

16. John Roberts - Gwahoddiad

Incredibly, this was originally an English-language hymn, I Hear Thy Welcome Voice, the words and tune of which were written in 1872. The Welsh version, Gwahoddiad, written by Calvinistic Methodist minister and musician Rev John Roberts, has become so well known in translation that many people believe it to be a traditional Welsh hymn. And that's why it is included here. Cerys Matthews also does a stunning version.

15. Manic Street Preachers - Motorcycle Emptiness

It could have been Motown Junk or You Love Us, but perhaps no song better sums up the early Manics' furious ideology than James Dean Bradfield's epic guitar riff that is veined through this stately piece of fretwork – an attack on the hollowness of the consumer lifestyle offered by capitalism - at a point in the Blackwood firebrands' career when they were full of righteous indignation and furious anger.

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14. Mary Hopkin – Those Were The Days

For the girl from Pontardawe things didn’t get any better than her debut single – this much-loved rendition of a classic folk standard. Released on August 30 in 1968 shortly after Hopkin had been signed to The Beatles’ newly created Apple label, the single was produced by Paul McCartney and was a number one hit in the UK, also reaching number two in the US.

13. John Cale – A Child’s Christmas In Wales

Sharing its title (and little else) with Dylan Thomas’ famous work, the lead-off track from the Ammanford enfant terrible’s Paris 1919 album from 1973 was a world away from his earlier more avant-garde stylings. It’s pretty, proggy chamber pop buoyed by a melody so joyous as to recall tiny fingers hurriedly unwrapping presents on Crimbo morning.

12. Meic Stevens – Y Brawd Houdini

As the iconic folk hero often referred to as ‘the Welsh Dylan’, Stevens’ songs have a mystical flavour, and are mostly sung in his native tongue. This bright and breezy 1968 ramshackle pop classic remains the troubadour’s defining moment.

11. Max Boyce – Hymns & Arias

If ever there was great timing, then Boyce had it. The song that would become the singer and comic's signature tune was released on his debut album Max Boyce In Session which would bring him to the attention of EMI Records setting him on the road to fame hand in hand with Welsh rugby's golden era.

10. Super Furry Animals – Fire In My Heart

University student halls in the ’90s would echo with the the sound of lovelorn lads busily learning the guitar chords to this song in an attempt to woo any learned lovelies who might be in earshot, adding extra sop to Gruff Rhys’ deliciously pining, accented lyrics. The track was originally called Heartburn and Rhys has described the track as a piece of country and western “soul advice”.

9. The Flying Pickets – Only You

Were it possible to build a time machine then most people might elect to go back to watch dinosaurs roam the land or have peeled grapes fed to them by a harem of Ancient Roman concubines. In the meantime though, being transported back to the fuzzy nostalgic glow of Christmas 1983 each time the radio plays this achingly gorgeous a capella cover of Yazoo’s finest moment (which boasted the late Brian Hibbard from Ebbw Vale at the helm) will more than suffice.

8. Tom Jones – Green Green Grass Of Home

First recorded by Johnny Darrell and then by Jerry Lee Lewis, Green Green Grass of Home went on to become a huge it for Sir Tom in 1966 where it reached number one in the UK Singles Chart on December 3, staying there for a total of seven weeks. It’s now become synonymous with all things Welsh – somewhat unfortunately given it’s actually the final reverie of a condemned prisoner facing the electric chair.

7. Shirley Bassey – Goldfinger

The sassy Bassey's greatest ever song from the 1964 James Bond film Goldfinger. Composed by John Barry and with lyrics by Leslie Bricusse and Anthony Newley, the bejewelled belter was performed by the Tiger Bay diva for the film's opening and closing title sequences, as well as the soundtrack album.

6. The Alarm – A New South Wales

When Mike Peters undertook a journey of discovery around Wales it was a pilgrimage that had a profound effect on him and his music. It resulted in his band The Alarm simultaneously releasing an album in English and Welsh – entitled Change/Newid. This thunderous homage to the people of the Valleys featuring the spine-tingling accompaniment of the massed voices of the The Morriston Orpheus Choir was its jewel in the crown. A rousing, passionate, political ode to Wales.

5. John Hughes and William Williams - Cwm Rhondda

The tune Cwm Rhondda was written by John Hughes, an organist at Capel Rhondda in Hopkinstown, near Pontypridd in the early 1900s. He took an earlier set of Welsh words written by William Williams and arranged a tune to them. But it is through its English translation that it is more commonly known, with, of course, the rousing 'Bread of Heaven' chorus.

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4. Evan and James James - Hen Wlad Fy Nhadau

Arguably the greatest national anthem of any country, the title – taken from the first words of the song – means "Old Land of My Fathers" in Welsh, usually rendered in English as simply Land of My Fathers. It was written by father and son Evan and James James.

3. Catatonia – International Velvet

If a song ever encapsulated a movement it was this track that defined Cool Cymru - featuring the stirring refrain "Every day when I wake up I thank the Lord I'm Welsh" which was memorably performed as part of the opening ceremony for the 1999 Rugby World Cup at the Millennium Stadium in Cardiff.

2. Manic Street Preachers – A Design For Life

Released in 1996, the song of class struggle that has become the Manics' totemic anthem was the first to be taken from the Everything Must Go album released in May that same year. The song was also the first to be written and released by the band following the mysterious disappearance of guitarist Richey Edwards the previous year. A monumental leap forward for arguably Wales' greatest ever band.

1. Badfinger – Without You

As close as anyone’s ever managed to capture the true sound of heartbreak on one of those little slabs of black vinyl, these Swansea power poppers’ song was rendered all the more affecting by the tragic fate that awaited them. Financial woes, legal wrangles and two key members committing suicides meant Badfinger’s story wasn’t a happy one, unlike that of the tune itself which went on to be covered by everyone from Harry Nilsson to Mariah Carey and described by Sir Paul McCartney as “the killer song of all time”. The song has been recorded by over 180 artists but it was first released on Badfinger’s 1970 album No Dice.